Once a possible engine for growth, the airport now teeters on the verge of being taxpayer-supported dead weight.

The facility’s business has plummeted in the last 10 years as travelers have become conditioned to driving, rather than flying, to Houston to board a plane. Now Jefferson County and airport officials again are trying to lure a carrier to join Continental in Mid-County. They are pointing to the revenue potential suggested by a 20-percent increase in ticket prices from 2008 to 2009. How exactly that will make more people want to fly out of the local airport seems hard to figure.

According to a 2007 study, the airport might generate at most 800,000 tickets a year. That would be four times the business the airport did 20 years ago and and 35-40 times more than it will do this year.

Even if you have your head far enough up in the clouds to think that number is possible, consider that an airline like Southwest won’t touch a market with less than a million potential ticket sales.

Cue the consultants, who say the key to revitalizing the airport is offering passengers a hub alternative to Houston and giving the carrier an attractive incentive package, likely to include some sort of revenue guarantee. There is no question about the first point. The second point, though, would seem a highly questionable use of tax dollars, in light of history and reality.

Like most, we would like to see the airport succeed. But if it does, it will be because of the facility’s merits and value, not officials’ nearsighted insistence that it should.